Geosciences and Web 2.0 at EGU GA 2010

The Educational and Outreach Symposia at the European Geosciences Union General Assembly 2010 cover a variety of topics. Several include examples of best practice. Virtual conferences and observatories are covered in ST6/EOS9 as described in the below guest blog from Sini Merikallio of the Finnish Meteorological Institute.

Thursday in Room 29, 10:30-12:00 in ST6/EOS9 Best practices in Education and Outreach contains a talk from a distinguished journalist who will be sharing his experience with scientists. Other talks include virtual conferences and online data repositories.

Tähdet ja Avaruus (‘Stars and Space’) is the most popular astro-magazine in the Nordic countries as measured by the number of subscribers. The Editor in Chief of the magazine, Marko Pekkola, has revolutionized the magazine and during his era the relative amount of astronomy hobbyists in the general public in Finland has increased to
become one of the world’s highest. Mr. Pekkola is invited to the session to reveal how this has been accomplished. The magazine has also witnessed numerous cases of both good and bad science popularizing, and Mr. Pekkola will also be sharing his educative
summary of these experiences.

Virtual conferences and remote accessing and representation of data are currently becoming crucial in the scientific community as well as among the general public. Dr. Victoria Pearson will talk about virtual conferencing techniques in enhancing remote public engagement. A special talk about building of a virtual observatory is also arranged: Dr. Mikko Syrjäsuo will present GAIA: an open access online virtual
observatory for accessing auroral data. Thanks to GAIA, anyone will be able to easily access high-quality data in order to work from their offices, home couches or from the classroom.